Let’s be honest, the timing will never be right. If you’re busy now you’ll be even busier when you take action. But you know what? You’ll be doing something you enjoy. Once you lay the foundation of your new business, you can start to automate it. You will have time once you give your time.

I don’t know how/not enough experience

So what? Most people don’t have a ton of experience in the businesses they started. No one knows EVERYTHING about the business they start. That is exactly why they hire people who do. Start your business with your idea, research it online, and learn just enough to start. Learn as you go. Remember, DONE is better than PERFECT.

I don’t have the money

There are businesses you can start that require little money. Read the Lean Startup. Furthermore, you can start a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, GoFundMe, or Indiegogo. If you believe in it, nothing should stop you.

I can’t do it alone

Then don’t! Find someone who will believe in you and your idea. Secondly, you can do it alone. Because you are awesome. If you want to do this, then do it and don’t look back until you get the results you want. If you need help, then go get it. You are worth the risk.

Things will change without me taking action

Maybe. Not in the way you want though. Life happens to us that is a fact. Life doesn’t discriminate. Life will knock you down and leave you on the ground bleeding if you let it. If you want something in your life, you need to GO GET IT. If not, keep waiting, waiting, and waiting. You’ll be waiting a long time.

I don’t have a following

That doesn’t matter right now. What new businesses have big followings or any followings when they first start? With today being the age of social media, you have access to the world. You can spread the word about who you are and what you can offer. You can impact the world with your idea or business if you commit to doing it. Press forward and you will get your true followers.

I’m afraid of failing

Hell, who isn’t? I’m afraid of failing. But you know what? I’m MORE afraid of letting my life pass me by and not taking the life I want. I am more afraid of staying in the same spot today as I would be 5, 10, 15+ years from now. That terrifies me. Do you fear that? Then failing for your dreams or new life is nothing. Failure teaches us lessons. Failure will make you unstoppable. Fail forward and you’ll succeed.

I don’t know what will happen

No one knows what tomorrow will bring. You have the best idea of the tomorrow you want. So do everything today you can do to make the tomorrow you envision. It may not happen right away, but, when you look back on yesterday, last week, last year, can you say you did everything you could to achieve the tomorrow you want?

I don’t want to disrupt my family or life

Wouldn’t it be more disruptive living in the life you’re unhappy with right now? If you aren’t living the life you or your family wants, then your life is already disrupted. You are just used to it. Loop your family in to your idea and get them on board. Your support system is key. Let them help you!

I should be content with my life & settle

Why? Why should you EVER settle? Settling or being content shouldn’t enter your mind. If you settle, you won’t ever have anything more than you have now. And you deserve more. Toss the words settle and content out of your mind right NOW. You want more. You want the life you envision. YOU WILL TAKE ACTION TO GET IT.

People won’t believe in me/support me

Some won’t, some will. You know what, though? Your success will make believers of everyone. Make the doubters believers, and make the believers your champions. The only one that matters in believing in you, is you.

Starting this past January, I started up a janitorial cleaning business. I knew this industry well enough through my prior job running a janitorial supply company and thought I’d give it a shot. My partner and I had worked out a $30,000 a month account and when I crunched the numbers, and it was too good to pass up. So we drew up a contract with this new client and got everything finalized for us to take over cleaning their buildings.

I started with 14 employees between 8 buildings to get our feet wet with this account. We thought we had done enough preparation to have this thing go without many hiccups. Boy, was I wrong. Throughout starting up this business we knew the work it would take to train our crews, and the capital it would take to start up. We checked the box on both of those, and thought we were good to go with a good crew manager.

We started and went on our way into the business. Night 1 – total nightmare. Night 2 – worse. And so forth. Nothing seemed to go right. But that’s expected in a start up, especially one so labor intensive as this. So we fired our crew manager, fired half of the crews, made adjustments and hoped for better results. As days went on, things got better, our crews improved with training, but the stress was a constant.

What was the problem with the crews and crew manager? The problem was that they both went against what they were hired to do. The manager canceled meetings, didn’t show up to manage the crews, and didn’t establish any semblance of consistency in these buildings. He didn’t last a week. When it comes to cleaning crews, they wouldn’t do the job the right way unless you were to micro manage them and follow their every move. If you were with them one night they would do great, if you were to let them run solo the next, they would do terrible and the customer complaints would flood in.

The result? Be with the crews every night to ensure the job gets done the right way.

This is what I saw – literally and figuratively every morning and night. A dark and gloomy road block. The road block figuratively, was how this business, albeit profitable, was driving me crazy and keeping me away from my goals in life. Literally, this sign was a road closed right outside where I live where I had to take a “detour” that increased my drive an easy 5 minutes. It doesn’t seem like much, but trust me, at the end of the day or beginning of a long one, it messes with your head!

Let’s recap real quick:

Within 1 week we fired our crew manager, and half of the crews because they deviated from the plan. We hired new crews who did the same thing if they weren’t managed. As days went on, the crews stayed the same. The job was all peaks and valleys, peaks depending on if we were present to monitor or not, like-wise for the valleys.

OK. That’s some serious turnover.

I began asking myself…

Did I want to succeed? You bet! Did I want this to consume everything about my life? Absolutely not!

As the quality of the work continued to be abysmal when we weren’t around (satisfactory when we were), it became increasingly obvious that it was time to get in and commit to cleaning every night, or get out.

I decided to let the business fail. I recognized the chaos in this industry is normal, and decided that even if this business were to succeed further (keep in mind it is already earning over $30,000 in revenue) the chaos and stress would not subside. Keeping this business did not inch me any closer to my goals in life.

The money was great, but the body of work that produced the money wasn’t worth it.

From that day forward, we made moves to dissolve the business and offload our buildings.

The thing about the cleaning industry when it comes to medical office buildings, is that it is a hard and thorough clean. It is physically demanding, stressful, and has a high employee turnover. These are not what I want in my life, even if I was to be paid as handsomely as I was.

Let’s breakdown the failures, success, and further why I decided to let it fail.

The Debrief

Successes

Despite me quitting this business it was very successful for how long I had it running for. Most businesses can’t get the sales I had in their first 1-2 years. We broke ground on a new industry while being very similar to the supply side and stayed above water. We hit profitability in month two after repaying shareholder contributions and paying off equipment purchases.

We hired and implemented crews to clean 8 different buildings ranging from 12,000 square feet up upwards of 50,000 square feet while starting them all on the same day. We succeeded in organizing the chaos and establishing our selves as a cleaning company to be reckoned with.

Failures

In my opinion, there are more failures that successes. I say this because there were several things we could have done different that would have changed the trajectory of the company, although my feelings about it would not have changed.

When we first bid the account, and eventually won the bid, we didn’t do our due diligence on it. We offered what we knew would make us money while saving the customer enough to give us the business. The problem is, we didn’t know exactly how critical the tenants in these buildings were. If you missed a trash can, missed refilling a dispenser, let alone failing to clean a section of the facility, you were chastised as if you robbed them blind. The clients were by far the worst and we didn’t even have the foresight to find out their specific requirements on a per suite basis. We knew what the customer needed in the grand scheme of things, but many of our issues stemmed from their tenants who demanded more than our customer did. Due to this, complaints occurred way more than anticipated. The tenants worked us into the ground demanding us clean and do things that were beyond the scope of our bid to this customer. We didn’t have to abide by these requests – but we did to make sure we kept the account. Let’s call this strike 1.

In not doing our due diligence, we also hired (and fired shortly thereafter) our crew manager whose job was to find, implement, and maintain the crews for the entire account. He procrastinated and waited until the day before we started to ensure the crews were ready to start. Keep in mind we had months to prepare our crews for this as we knew well in advance of when we needed to start cleaning these buildings. The crew manager was in no way, shape, or form prepared. Because of this the crews were most definitely not prepared either. We fired almost all of them after this development. This in turn caused my partner and I to have the be present with these crews, both new and old, to make sure the job was done to our expectations.

Why I let the business fail

In summary, I let this business fail because it didn’t align with where I wanted my life to go. And as you read further, you will learn why.

My goals in creating a business, is to succeed of course, but in building to that success I want to have more time freed up to allow me to do what I want with my son, my wife, and myself while making an income to satisfy all of our needs. When I say more time, I mean that I want to have something built where my time doesn’t directly impact the money I make. I want a business model that has as much passive income as I can build it to have. But remember, all passive income streams still require time and effort. I understand that I’ll need to put in a lot of time and effort to start up, but once built my time will be mine again to do with it what I want.

I knew that this business would not meet any of my goals no matter how hard I fought for it to. It is a stressful industry that requires more time and effort that I was willing to give up, because the time and effort expended would not result in my time freedom. It would result in substantial money. This money came at a cost though. The cost being my life being consumed by this business that I did not even enjoy. I’m not willing to work myself to death to make money for a business I loathed.

That was another reason I let it fail, I hated it. I went into it for the money, and I left the money to take back my sanity.

If there was one thing I took away from this above all else it is that I need to whatever will align with my goals and eventually guide me to meeting them.

This business was not it.

I QUIT!

Because we are all about testing, I feel it would do you no good if I didn’t write an article on if I were to take a do over and what I would do different going into the contract I secured.

Let’s go back to the beginning. My brother and I grew up in a single parent household on the outskirts of Seattle. Our dad was a man who chose to not be around. Our mom was a woman who had chronic depression issues and nothing but time on her hands. And not in a good way. Throughout our childhood our mom channeled her inner abuser to emotionally attack us daily. But what was worse? Emotional abuse or a ghost of a dad?

Probably the abuser…

I tell you all of this because our parents didn’t make time for us, to raise us, to teach us. These parents were stuck in their Suck and couldn’t (or didn’t) do a thing about it.

I learned one big lesson from my parents, as many of us do. This one lesson was that in no way, shape, or form, did I wanted to let the Suck take my time away from what I wanted in life. It would not dictate my life.

So, what is “the Suck” you ask?

The suck is anything that is a negative impact on your life, those aspects of your life that take your time with little payoff, or things that aren’t acceptable to your goals in life. Even circumstances that make you lose your time-money trade-off.

Now you know what the Suck is. Let’s look at our lives and think what the Suck? What is “the Suck” in your life? Let me walk you through my current Suck and why I started my journey to ESCAPE it.

What the Suck?!

That’s right. That’s what I’ve been saying through my struggles. My current Suck started in 2014 after I had just graduated college and was hired to run a janitorial supply company. I was taken on and thrown into the fire to get learning how to run the company. Some teaching occurred, but most was self-taught.

You are probably thinking that I lucked out or that you would love this opportunity..

And you aren’t necessarily wrong, depending what your goals are.

I was doing EVERYTHING, and I still am. This is a business that has forced me to do many tasks at the same time, which means I can’t do any of them as well I could individually with 100% effort (if you don’t believe me, read The One Thing – this book was of vast importance to me).

But let’s get back to what the Suck is for me real quick. I’ve been doing everything, working like a dog, and come 2015, my wife was coming due to have our son. Fast forward a few months and we have this beautiful little boy. Even though I’ve had this life changing little man, I didn’t have any time for him, myself, or my family. I had none before and I still don’t despite this massive change. My job wouldn’t allow me to take time off to be with my newborn son. From that point on, I decided to take any and all steps to Escape the Suck.

I have stayed with this company attempting to free more time up and to be more productive through implementing new processes and developing my staff to be more productive and self-sustaining in their work. This didn’t eliminate the Suck though (it may – but it hasn’t yet). As a new parent, time for my family was something I wasn’t willing to budge on. I knew I could make more than enough money while not giving up my time doing it my way.

A year later I started a commercial cleaning company with a big contract landed. Looking to Escape the Suck, I ran with it. Although, in hindsight I should have reviewed the business model much more thoroughly prior to securing this contract. This business required me to physically clean and be in the trenches in order for it to survive. I thought about the direction of this industry a bit more.. janitorial cleaning is a dying breed, before long it will be done almost entirely by robotics … decades down the road – but it’s coming!

I went from seeing my son 30 minutes a day to not seeing him for several days straight. What should I do? I go back to my goals in Escaping the Suck. Did this conflict with my goals? Absolutely! I started the process to shut down the business the second I answered that question.

My time-money trade off needs to align with my goals. If it doesn’t, then I escape it. If it does, then I attack it.

If there is one thing you take away from this, I want to question the things in your life that are “the Suck”. If you don’t know what that is just yet, that is perfectly fine. I will help guide you towards the discovery of your suck, and how to escape it.

Ask yourself:

What are my goals at my job or business?

What are my goals for my family?

Do they align with my current path?

What am I willing to do to make them align?

Is there something better I can do to get what I want?

How much time am I giving up and how much will I get in return?

Get your FREE goal-setting guide to get started!

As you can see, time is the one constant. How much TIME are you giving up and what are you getting in return? Your return needs to be worth it to you. If it’s not, then a change is necessary. Your time is worth everything. The key here, is realizing where the suck is and figuring out how to get away from it. I have gone through the suck, heck I still am. I am escaping it with you. And we can do it. I have no doubts that if we start questioning what the suck is in our lives are, escape it(or them), and attack our goals, then we will get the results we want.

This is exactly why Stu and I created this blog. We are Escaping our current Suck, as you are or will be very soon. I want more than I am getting in my life, and I have the power to achieve it.

As I go through the steps in my Escape, I am going to document it all on this blog. Be it money-making tips or tests, productivity tips or life hacks that have helped me in my Escape, resources that I have used in my process, and even how I started this blog and brought it to where it is today.

I am going to show YOU everything I have done and will do!

For those of you are stuck in a rut, or are fearful of taking action and making the change you know you need to make. Follow us on our journey, and take tested (by us) action.

CLICK HERE TO START YOUR ESCAPE TODAY!

YOU CAN DO IT!

Share you story with me, every week we will be doing a featured Escape the Suck post from a submission to provide a fresh perspective on an Escape the Suck journey!

I’ve always had trouble finding the time and patience to sit down and read a book. Be it 300 pages or 1000, it has always been something I found difficult. When I first started listening to audiobooks, I found the patience to listen, process, and even listen again if I felt I missed something. It took me dramatically less time to listen for 8-10 hours in total for a book than sit down for days, weeks, even months to finish just one book.

I know I’m not the only one out there, and if you’re like me you’ll understand!

So, with that in mind, here are the top audio books from Audible (in no specific order) I’ve listened to so far this year (but that does not mean the book is FROM this year) on. I will be linking up the actual books should you want to buy them in book form rather than listen on Audible.

This is a classic. I have listened to it a couple of times now and there’s always something new for me to learn. It takes a couple listens to get used to language because of the age gap from when the book was written versus today when you are listening to it. I consider this to be more of a mindset book. In that I mean it is telling you how you need to think and act to be successful.

Easily one of the best audiobooks I’ve listened to. There were lessons that resonated with the current times, alongside timeless lessons. Zero to One provides actionable steps that even the wantrapreneur can use to take the next step forward.

This was another book so the audio version depicted the time with which it was written. Much like Think and Grow Rich this book was a harder one to listen to. I knew I needed to though, as everywhere I looked this was a highly recommended book to read or listen to. And man, was that spot on! Another success mindset book in my opinion.

Any Tim Ferris book is going to be a killer read. I’m also currently reading his newest book, Tools of Titans. Yes, I said I am actually reading it. Which for me is a big deal because I don’t have the patience to sit down for that long to actually get any legit reading done! This is a top audiobook post, but I felt inclined to mention how awesome Tim’s latest book is. But, back to The 4-hour Workweek, this was the very FIRST audiobook I listened to and I’d say I’ve learned the most from it. With that said, a must listen (or read!).

This is another short but great listen. In a nut shell, it is teaches us to do less, to achieve more. Don’t muddy up the water with distractions but instead only do those actions that yield the highest results.

My wife just went into labor and we rushed into the hospital to welcome our new child. Hours later we welcome our magnificent baby boy to the world. We are full of joy and nothing else for making him and having our lives changed forever in taking care of him.

He looks up at me and wraps his hand around my pointer finger, and knows he is safe. I am his protector, his champion, his never-wavering rock.

For the next couple of days, I stayed home with my wife to help her take care of our new son. We welcomed him on a Saturday morning, and I stayed to help through Tuesday. Why did I only stay two days to help out with my new boy? My boss wouldn’t allow me more time off because his business was more important than my life changing new arrival.

I was forced into a circumstance, where, as my baby boy’s rock, I had a decision to make… stay at home to care for him, and jeopardize my job’s status or leave prematurely to ensure my family was financially supported.

This is my suck.

The suck to me, is anything that doesn’t inch you closer to your goals in life. My goals are to get more time with my family, and make money more efficiently to give me that time. When I can’t stay home with my brand new baby boy for two weeks to help out, that is unacceptable, and is definitely The Suck. Family is important to me. A value that was instilled in me early as a child through being “raised” by a single mother struggling to be a mother to my brother and I, paired with a non-existent father.

From this point forward I knew what I had to do to get what I wanted. This is what spurs me to write about my Suck right here. I am going through it every day. I am trying to come up with strategies to make money to make time for me. We all go through it. I am going through it. Stuart is going through it. We are going to walk you through our strategies and experiments that might provide us the escape we are looking for.

Keep in touch, and stay tuned, we are going to map out what does and doesn’t work. When we do, execute and escape your Suck!

What IS The Suck?

It’s like 10am, and my eyes are burning.

I’m staring at my laptop’s screen in a room with no windows. And my eyes are burning. It’s not because of the screen, it’s not because of the subject matter.

I’ve got pink eye again because taking the subway at rush hour is a dirty thing, and this entire building doesn’t have any soap in the bathrooms. None. Or toilet paper for that matter. And I’m spending 9-6 in the office, plus networking afterhours, for a shady interior design company. And only 12k RMB per month. That’s about $20k USD per year.

My apartment… the landlord won’t bother fixing anything so my toilet flushes with a fishing line and a plastic ring. There are mysterious white spots all over the floor, later followed to the source – my roommate’s disgusting mouth. She spits inside the apartment.

#nofilter

And then on top of that, I get fired and dumped in the same summer month.

This is 2011, and this is the bottom of The Suck for me.

Marines like to call the Corps itself “The Suck” in the spirit of comradery. All of life is kind of like that. It’s a struggle. Just like the Marines, we should stick it out, help each other out, and better our lives.

That’s why my brother Patrick and I created Escape the Suck. We haven’t escaped it, not by any measure, but we are still struggling, and know we can do it. We have to escape it ourselves, and as we do, we want to share our trials and tribulations, our wins and triumphs. Most of all, we want to share how we progress upon our quest.

Let’s all reclaim our time, make more money, and find more peace of mind, together.